As I get older, I find myself increasingly out of touch with the world. Or rather, more specifically, I feel out of touch with society.

I despair at the structure of government, the ludicrous concessions we make to celebrity, the obsession with physical beauty over achievement or decency of character, the sheer lack of empathy towards our fellow man.

I despise the power structure of our world, how those with money, with fame, with beauty, with ability, or a job title with "manager" in it, are considered to be worth more than the rest of us. I cannot express my rage regarding wars fought over territory, or for corporate gain. I hate how powerless I feel to change anything, beneath a barrage of political lies that the vast majority of us lap up because we're so scared and angry all the time..

I hate how the bigger you are, the more influence you wield. How - in a country of 320 million people - Donald Trump, a man who looks and sounds about as intelligent as a donut with sinus problems balancing a Weetabix, can be front-runner to become leader, while his opponents include a gun-loving patriot whose brother and father have already been president, and a robot woman whose sleazy human husband was also The Leader of the Free World.

And how nobody ever stops to ask whether that feels fair or balanced.

I equally despair at how Paul McCartney, with his fooling-nobody dyed hair and entourage of much-younger peers, can stand at the door to a nightclub - at 73 years old - and expect to be allowed inside, because he's a "VIP".

Why would he even want to go to a nightclub at 73, anyway?! What has gone wrong there that he feels he needs to so desperately cling to youth, to relevance?

​I hate how we all tune in to see the frocks at a meaningless jamboree of narcissistic self-congratulation like the Oscars or the BAFTAs. Why don't they televise the plumbing awards, or the insurance awards, or the farmer of the year show, or the Good Parenting Awards? What's so boring about the rest of us, eh?!

The left, the right, the middle ground, the tabloids, the broadsheets, the celebrity mags... it's just a cacophony of entrenched opinions, or gossip, or body-shaming, and I hate how confused I feel all the time by all of this. It has become a wall of white noise that I struggle to fight through. Knee-jerk, tabloid fearmongering, versus equally knee-jerk broadsheet campaigning.

It feels like nobody stops to ask whether what they believe in is because it's the right thing, the decent thing, or because they're puppets to their programming... or because Katie Hopkins/Richard Dawkins/David Icke has told them to. Frustration doesn't even cover it.

​And - honestly - I'm about two more pangs of impotent rage away from going to live in a trailer in the middle of the Mojave Desert, with a solar shower and a couple of shotguns.

Video games feel like they're the only thing that make sense anymore.

GAMING MIGHT BE WHAT?​Gaming might be bigger than it always has been, yet it has somehow always existed on the fringes of our society.

The higher-ups often don't seem to understand it; however big a game might be, it still somehow seems apart from everything else.

​We don't, as a whole, celebrate gaming in the way that we celebrate politicians or movies. It's not just the indie scene that feels like it's outside of everything else, but even the big games - those released by the Sonys or Microsofts of the world.

When the mainstream pays lip-service to gaming, it's tentative, almost fearful. Like we're a race of indigenous people and they've just landed on our shores. We look funny to them, with our strange, almost imperceptible customs and language. No wonder they're a bit scared of us.

When games are reported on in the mainstream media, it's usually because some Korean kid has suffered a heart-attack because he played games non-stop for a week, or because some new game is going to cause the moral decay of civilisation, or because The Mirror has a tie-up with Sony to give away a PlayStation 4 and Street Fighter V, or something. It's the usual fear-mongering guff, riddled with a lack of understanding.

Somehow, gaming still feels underground. It still feels like a community in and of itself (albeit one, as well we know, rife with its own political and ethical divisions, which reflect everything that's wrong with the rest of the planet, sadly).

IN A WORLD...But in a world that I feel increasingly detached from, I feel closer to gaming than ever. In the years when I wasn't writing as Mr Biffo, I knew something was missing from my life - and it was this.

​It was engaging again with a community, with a world, with a society, that I feel at home in. That I don't feel confused or frustrated by. One that simply celebrates itself.

Alright, we're not perfect - far from it - but gaming is ours. They don't understand it. They don't want to be a part of it. There may be threats and divisions within gaming - as there are with any society, once it reaches a certain size - but those of us who play games are all gamers. We're the smart ones, the ones who've realised that human beings have one thing in common: we all want to play.

A society built upon the concept of that, the ideal of play, makes a damn sight more sense to me than the screwed-up mess we're forced to live in by default.

Very nicely written Mr biffo. I think we hover around a similar age and work mates and friends don't understand that I have no interest in Tv, papers, Facebook and so on. They find it bizarre that I still at 'my age' would rather be playing video games. This for a billion dollar business.
Even my partner of 20 odd years commented last night 'are you still walking round that forest?'
It's firewatch,it's a nice forest.

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Ben

17/2/2016 01:02:42 pm

That opening...I punched the air and cried.

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Euphemia

17/2/2016 01:18:06 pm

"Manger?"

That aside, couldn't agree more.

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Mr Biffo

17/2/2016 01:29:52 pm

What would I do without my team of subs...?

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Euphemia

17/2/2016 03:42:26 pm

Glad to help!

It may seem a bit trite, but I'd been taught that what you manage is things and stuff; you can manage equipment and processes, but not people. What most managers learn on courses is to apply, essentially, accounting processes to deal with people in terms of scoring, numbers, org charts, reviews, targets, accountability, attendance, KPI's etc. without any recourse to context. They teach that shit on courses and in business school like it's the gospel. It's horribly common in a typical corporate environment and devalues everyone working there, including the managers who are setting themselves and those in their charge up for failure as people don't fit into neat boxes, and end up being demotivated as a result.

Except for psychopaths, they're amazing at fitting into boxes and love numbers and systems they can game, which is why they tend to climb high quickly. Shit floats.

And, from experience, good employees don't need motivation - bad employees do. Most everyone is motivated by doing a good job. If you treat everyone like they're not trying or apply motivation to people already doing well you just turn everyone into a shitty employee.

There's a world of difference between managing and leading, leaders should be appointed based on character, and motivated by the welfare of those they are responsible for. And that just doesn't happen often enough in any part of this world.

Keith

17/2/2016 01:20:58 pm

Good article. My fear, though is that the "otherness" of gaming is changing - perhaps as a bid to include the mainstream, games actually are being designed to fit the stereotypes of what games are.
Take a game like Battlefront. Release it ten years ago, and though it might look to a passing non-gamer like you were just shooting other ships, you could roll your eyes at the criticism and know you were actually playing through a fun story in which you were playing a role. But now, yep - just shooting ships. You can't even pretend you're a good guy or bad guy, because you switch alliance every match anyway.

And, kind of like how indie music has been ghettoised at various points over the years, so indie games have fallen into a trap of being "worthy"; inventive games themselves aren't valued critically (here notwithstanding) but get a critical shot in the arm if they are about issues. Gaming itself might be a sub culture still, but it feels more self aware than ever. I don't want to play games to feel like a gamer - I want to experience stuff, whether it be as simple as a well designed puzzle, or as involved as a 100 hour RPG where I play a Jedi

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Mark

17/2/2016 01:56:05 pm

A great read - your words echo many of my own sentiments about the sad state we find the world in.

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Clive Peppard

17/2/2016 04:55:07 pm

Another piece of class Biffster.

I often bemoan how my parents generation (the baby boomers who are responsible for all our current woes btw) ridicule and belittle video games as the pursuits of children.

My theory has always been that when video games became a thing (thats the early 80's to me, Im 36) they were already adults and so video games were something they bought for their kids and they havent been able to re-rationalise this even to this day. As a result they still consider them to be childish pursuits.

Ive tried to work out whether this is true across the generations but cant think of another technological innovation considred in such a way. My Grandparents never dismissed television as something for kids, most likely as it was never targeted in such a way. So teh way i see it video games hold a unique position in society in terms of generational points of view and this wont change til teh boomers do the decent thing and die out, possibly in a logans run style game show...

until then we shall remain apart and distinct, and thats probably not a bad thing :)

I preferred it as 'manger' - much better mental image! Also, I've been particularly miserable all day, (no work as a gardener today - utterly crap weather), and then read this, which pretty much sums up my world view. Even more miserable now. :-)

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Col. Asdasd

17/2/2016 06:11:06 pm

Great piece Biff. I have the feeling gaming serving an escape from all this bluster and rage before certain parties decided to start a full-blown culture war, but as you say, that's just human nature playing out in every sphere. In many ways it was a minor miracle we got away with it for as long as we did.

Thank you for verbalising so well the confusions and frustrations and sheer rage I have been feeling the last few years.

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Johnny Organ

17/2/2016 09:18:05 pm

Great article, Mr Biffo. I cannot express how close to home this touched. The world is in a depressingly bad state.
For the record - this site certainly alleviates the same morbid thoughts you have (along with the games of course).

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Mr Biffo

18/2/2016 08:52:37 am

We could all club together to buy an island somewhere, and go set up our own nation?

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Euphemia

18/2/2016 01:03:43 pm

If we're struggling to keep you stocked with crayons, post-it notes and pencil sharpeners then the odds of us affording something that hasn't already been used for nuclear testing aren't stellar.

Of course I also have trouble feeling like part of the gaming community. Too many sites are too big and have a 'cool kids club' who people Fawn over.

I like that this place feels like a gaming site from web 1.0 or 1.5, it's a small group where you can follow people and get to know them. I've been a member of a very large site since 2004 and have participated exactly 5 times because of the exclusionary attitude.

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Mr Biffo

18/2/2016 08:24:41 pm

Yeah, I also like that Digi at least feels pretty niche. I love all the comments on here, even if I don't always comment in return. And like you I certainly don't feel comfortable with the whole cliquey "cool kids" sort of thing that some sites seem to have. That was the whole idea behind the names Biffo and Hairs - so that Digi's writers stayed anonymous and weren't sort of inadvertently pedestal-ised like some games mag writers of the day.

Some people earn their followings fairly by turning out quality content. They are usually kind and appreciative of the comments and can take feedback.

Then there's people who less earn them and more post enough that they get attention and people who are so starved to be a groupie will become a toadie of a mostly-anonymous internet personality. One person I know was a member of a site where the staff was more of a social club. Upon being nominated to said club she left the site.

https://themaresnest.wordpress.com/ is an interesting read. Everything they post is verified and actually happened or is subsequently corrected.

The Pope.

19/2/2016 01:28:24 pm

David Icke is sadly insane.
Katie Hopkins is a vile bigot.
Richard Dawkins just states the bleeding obvious and is reviled for it.

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Col. Asdasd

20/2/2016 10:24:20 am

I thought about this piece again as I was reading Liz Ryerson's sort-of farewell to games (http://ellaguro.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/im-leaving-games.html) . The whole thing is worth a read (like everything she writes) but the part labelled 'post script' seems particularly relevant.

Looking at the retro gaming scene in America, which she rather pointedly contrasts with the new wave of indie games and GDC style modern, AAA gaming, she talks about the "unpretentious enjoyment" that games provide, something which is so pure that it becomes a "church for a lot of very damaged, lost people".

But she also critiques this notion at its foundations. When we escape from the (many, many) problems of the world, we also shut out the possibility of confronting the problems we seek to leave behind. At the same time she argues that in our gratitude for the shelter that games provides we end up venerating them to the point where they can't be challenged or improved.

(Hence, I guess, the reflexive hostility of the gamergate movement. Damaged people for whom gaming is also the only society that made sense, and whose fear that it might be taken away from them drives them to unconscionable behaviour.)

Or that's how I read it. I hope she never reads this comment because I'm doubtless butchering her sentiments entirely.

Yup, I've essentially blocked myself from TV, papers and most main news sources over recent years, just got sick and tired of it all.

Gaming and Game Programming are so much more fun and engaging forms.

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killchen

21/2/2016 07:51:32 pm

Enjoying you working yourself up into a lather over Faul McCartney going out to night clubs at age 73

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Bob

22/2/2016 09:49:23 am

I think this articlce kinda misses a central point: They (tm) don't care about gaming because they don't have to - games are a perfect opiate and -at least at the moment - don't hold any chance at challenging the current system. In fact they strenghen it by giving lots of frustrated people a cheap escape from reailty.